The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Because News Corp. has apparently given up any pretensions to respecting the privacy of others, it recently updated the privacy policy for the Wall Street Journal website to allow the company to connect personally identifiable information with Web browsing data without user consent.

Before the change, which was made on Tuesday, the WSJ.com privacy policy stated it would obtain “express affirmative consent” to combine personal data with “click stream information.”

And it’s not just WSJ.com. The change is being made to all member sites in the Journal’s Digital Network, including Marketwatch.com, AllthingD.com, Barrons.com and SmartMoney.com.

Additionally, the privacy policy now states that the sites collects mobile browser ID information.

Why the change?
The network’s general manager says that by combining the identifying info with the browsing history, it will “allow us to provide customized Wall Street Journal service information to our users.”

She adds that the change “is not being applied retrospectively and only applies going forward to new registered users and subscribers.”

If this is truly a benefit to users of the Wall Street Journal sites, News Corp. should make it opt-in only and be compelled to make its case to its readers, rather than making a quiet, behind-the-scenes change in its long-winded privacy policy.